Senior Data Scientist, Fisheries & Water Resources

ICF is hiring a Senior Data Scientist for its Fish and Aquatic Science and Technology Team, supporting water resource clients with quantitative analysis, decision support modeling, and applied science publications. This remote role from San Francisco, CA is near-term focused on Chinook Salmon in California’s Central Valley, with opportunities to build reproducible data science workflows and contribute to deliverables used by clients and stakeholders.

In this position, you will help translate monitoring data into transparent models and decision tools, while also participating in scientific writing and client-facing discussions. You can expect a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment where technical depth and clear communication are both central to delivery.

• Conduct analyses and lead or assist with writing scientific documents, technical reports, and peer-reviewed manuscripts for fish-related projects
• Develop, update, and document statistical, population, and decision support models for fish and water resource management (including Chinook Salmon recovery and flow decisions)
• Build and maintain reproducible codebases and automated data pipelines that connect monitoring data to models
• Meet with water resource clients to discuss technical aspects of planning, implementation, and monitoring
• Describe projects and interpret analyses through written and oral communication and interactive visualizations for a broad audience, sometimes in contentious environments
• Conduct scientific research to generate knowledge that informs resource management
• Collaborate with a multi-disciplinary technical team to complete analyses and documentation on time and within budget
• Develop scope and budget and write proposals
• Build and maintain client relationships
• Mentor junior biologists

• Master’s degree in fisheries biology, fisheries and wildlife, quantitative ecology, or equivalent science-related field
• 5 years of increasingly complex assignments in fish data science

• Fish management expertise in Northern California, including Chinook Salmon population dynamics, endangered species recovery, habitat restoration, flow management, and monitoring program design
• Water management expertise in California, including reservoir and conveyance operations, water supply and allocation, environmental flows, and drought and flood management
• Ability to understand and interpret water operations and hydrologic and hydraulic information and connect implications to fish populations, habitat, and decisions
• Familiarity with California water policy and the legislative process
• Strong quantitative analysis skills to evaluate effects of proposed actions, including hierarchical and Bayesian statistical models and machine learning
• Ability to interpret hydrologic, hydraulic, and telemetry modeling outputs and integrate them into fish population and decision-support models
• Advanced statistical analysis capability and proficiency in R,
  Python
  , and SQL

• Demonstrated ability to design and implement transparent, reproducible, and collaborative workflows aligned with U.S. federal Open Science and Open Data expectations
• Experience with documented, version-controlled analytical workflows
• Clear data provenance, automation of data processing and reporting, and production of reusable data, code, and analytical products
• Ability to establish shared workflows and documentation to support collaboration, scientific review, knowledge transfer, and reuse across teams and agency partners

• R,
  Python
  , SQL
  , Stan
  , Template Model Builder
  , R Shiny

• Peer-reviewed scientific publication record and experience presenting at…